Residents in the Braintree district are among the least happy in Essex, according to a new wellbeing survey.

The twice-yearly survey, compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), put Braintree towards the bottom of the pile of districts in the county when it comes to happiness, topped only by Maldon, Harlow, Castle Point and Chelmsford.

Researchers also asked 165,000 people across the UK: “Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?”.

One a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘completely’, residents in the district averaged 7.64 in the answer to this question.

This landed them third from the bottom of the list of districts in Essex - Harlow and Tendring were the only places with a worse score.

Braintree came middle of the road in terms of residents’ life satisfaction (an average of 7.51 out of 10) and anxiety (2.9 out of 10).

See this week's Braintree and Witham Times for the full story.